South Korea Leader Relaxes Crackdown

SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — In a sudden and unexplained shift, South Korea's president appeared Monday to retreat from a crackdown on opposition politicians.

He held a lunch meeting with key opposition leaders and allowed them to convene a party meeting that the police forcibly blocked a few days ago.

In a meeting at his residence Monday, President Chun Doo Hwan told the presidents of South Korea's two opposition parties -- the New Korea Democratic Party and the Korea National Party -- that the police had overreacted in cordoning off entrances to opposition party headquarters and placing nearly 300 opposition party members under house arrest last Thursday, said a high- ranking official in the president's office.

Chun said that in the future such ''frictions'' should not be repeated.

At the meeting, Chun outlined several proposals in an attempt to break a deadlock over a banned opposition petition drive to amend the nation's constitution to permit direct elections for president.

For the first time, Chun committed his party to support constitutional revision, although he said that any changes must wait until after the presidential elections and the Seoul Olympics, both in 1988.

He proposed establishing two commissions, one in the administration and one in the National Assembly, to study the issue, the presidential official said. Spokesmen for both the government and the opposition said that the proposals represented a major departure from Chun's previous stance, which precluded all debate on the issue until 1989. But the meeting produced no clear resolution of the petition issue, and left opposition leaders divided on whether Chun's proposals were sincere or an attempt to put the opposition party on the defensive.